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Cooper, Hart, Leggiero & Whitehead

Agency Challenges CDC Study Calling Asbestos Safe

Late in 2007, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigators
played volleyball at Illinois Beach State Park, a six-acre public
playground/Lake Michigan beachfront near Zion, Illinois.

This 20-member emergency-response team wasn’t
on vacation, though. They were trying to stir up beach sand and
gravel to test for microscopic asbestos fibers, in response to an
earlier joint investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 (a
Chicago television broadcast affiliate of NBC News), which had in
the spring of 2007 conducted a joint study to find asbestos samples
which reportedly wash up on the aforementioned beach – a process
that still occurs today.

Jeff Camplin, an asbestos expert working
with the IDPS, describes it thus: “For the last 10 years,
their mantra is, well, yes, there're pieces (of asbestos) there,
and in 99.9 percent of any other situation, children would not be
allowed in an area where asbestos is continually found, let alone
a 7-and-a-half-mile beach.”

The IDPS has been fighting state and federal authorities to either
clean up the beach under EPA Superfund provisions, or allow the
agency to display its Asbestos Safety Tips flyer at the beach, a
move so far prohibited by the state. Camplin is slated to testify
before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Investigations
and Oversight, which is investigating allegations of scientific
fraud by ATSDR, which issued the most recent report calling the
beach safe.

In its report, the ATSDR stated that beach use is not anticipated
to harm people’s health because asbestos fibers were found
in only 13 of 154 samples, “at levels within or below the
EPA’s target risk range”.

The Congressional subcommittee is investigating charges that the
ATSDR uses faulty, flawed or skewed science, as was the case when
it reported the safety of trailers provided to Hurricanes Katrina
and Rita victims – trailers which were so contaminated with
formaldehyde that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers
were forbidden to enter them.

Camplin has already commented on the fact that the agency seems
beset by some “consistent pattern of unethical behavior and
scientific fraud”.

The park, also known as Adeline Jay Geo-Karis Illinois Beach State
Park, is near the Wisconsin border, about five miles north of where
a massive asbestos cleanup at the old Johns-Manville plant on the
Waukegan (Illinois) lakeshore was completed in 1991. The old fishing
pier near the Midwest Generation coal-fired plant, a half mile south
of that, has been closed for several years because of asbestos contamination.

Paul Kakuris, the IDPS president, has also questioned not only
the report’s findings but its untimely release, 18 months
late but just in time for the Congressional hearing, where preliminary
comments state that officials from the ATSDR consistently "deny,
delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns."
"Time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly
confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health
of local communities throughout the nation."

The ATSDR and the CDC have both declined comment, saying only
that Director Howard Frumkin would address all charges on when he
appears before the subcommittee on March 12 as scheduled.

The Dunesland group also has filed a complaint with the U.S. Inspector
General's Office.

The issue of asbestos at Illinois Beach State Park has been studied
any number of times by various state and federal agencies, all of
whom issue the same positive safety reports. Kakuris calls the ATSDR
report more of the same “junk science”, and contends
that the assorted state and federal agencies are complicit in endangering
the health of U.S. citizens.

In Kakuris’ favor, reporters note that the Midwest Generation
pier still remains closed in spite of these favorable safety recommendations.
Officials say that situation is the result of no one knowing who
is responsible (the state or Midwest) if someone is injured walking
on the old pier. It’s a good escape clause, if one can believe
it.